http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/2006/12/escaping-matrix-and-far-beyond-and.html
Note: These are just leads to links that in turn are leads to other links. In a way, all links are interconnected in the Internet Matrix of Connected Reality. ~Blessings ~ +Peta-de-Aztlan+
http://escapingthematrix.org/
| by Richard Moore. Published by The Cyberjournal Project, Redwood City, California | ||||||||||||||
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http://quaylargo.com/rkm/WE/jun00Matrix.shtml
| Escaping the Matrix | ||
Copyright © 2000 Richard K. Moore Are you ready for the red pill? The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In Plato's famous parable about the shadows on the walls of the cave, true reality is at least reflected in perceived reality. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes. The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a particular perspective on what's going on in the world--and how things got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion. Like Neo, I didn't know what I was looking for when my investigation began, but I knew that what I was being told didn't make sense. I read scores of histories and biographies, observing connections between them, and began to develop my own theories about roots of various historical events. I found myself largely in agreement with writers like Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti, but I also perceived important patterns that others seem to have missed. When I started tracing historical forces, and began to interpret present-day events from a historical perspective. I could see the same old dynamics at work and found a meaning in unfolding events far different from what official pronouncements proclaimed. Such pronouncements are, after all, public relations fare, given out by politicians who want to look good to the voters. Most of us expect rhetoric from politicians, and take what they say with a grain of salt. But as my own picture of present reality came into focus, "grain of salt" no longer worked as a metaphor. I began to see that consensus reality--as generated by official rhetoric and amplified by mass media--bears very little relationship to actual reality. "The matrix" was a metaphor I was ready for. In consensus reality (the blue-pill perspective) "left" and "right" are the two ends of the political spectrum. Politics is a tug-of-war between competing factions, carried out by political parties and elected representatives. Society gets pulled this way and that within the political spectrum, reflecting the interests of whichever party won the last election. The left and right are therefore political enemies. Each side is convinced that it knows how to make society better; each believes the other enjoys undue influence; and each blames the other for the political stalemate that apparently prevents society from dealing effectively with its problems. This perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left and right, is very far from reality. It is a fabricated collective illusion. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is "the world that was pulled over your eyes to hide you from the truth....As long as the Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free." Consensus political reality is precisely such a matrix. Later we will take a fresh look at the role of left and right, and at national politics. But first we must develop our red-pill historical perspective. I've had to condense the arguments to bare essentials; please see the annotated sources at the end for more thorough treatments of particular topics.
The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been the pursuit of economic gain, ever since Isabella commissioned Columbus on his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning wars, however, has typically been about other things--the White Man's Burden, bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny, defeating the Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do, as long as it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time. The propaganda lies of yesterday were recorded and became consensus history--the fabric of the matrix. While the costs of territorial empire (fleets, colonial administrations, etc.) were borne by Western taxpayers generally, the profits of imperialism were enjoyed primarily by private corporations and investors. Government and corporate elites were partners in the business of imperialism: empires gave government leaders power and prestige, and gave corporate leaders power and wealth. Corporations ran the real business of empire while government leaders fabricated noble excuses for the wars that were required to keep that business going. Matrix reality was about patriotism, national honor, and heroic causes; true reality was on another plane altogether: that of economics. Industrialization, beginning in the late 1700s, created a demand for new markets and increased raw materials; both demands spurred accelerated expansion of empire. Wealthy investors amassed fortunes by setting up large-scale industrial and trading operations, leading to the emergence of an influential capitalist elite. Like any other elite, capitalists used their wealth and influence to further their own interests however they could. And the interests of capitalism always come down to economic growth; investors must reap more than they sow or the whole system comes to a grinding halt. Thus capitalism, industrialization, nationalism, warfare, imperialism--and the matrix--coevolved. Industrialized weapon production provided the muscle of modern warfare, and capitalism provided the appetite to use that muscle. Government leaders pursued the policies necessary to expand empire while creating a rhetorical matrix, around nationalism, to justify those policies. Capitalist growth depended on empire, which in turn depended on a strong and stable core nation to defend it. National interests and capitalist interests were inextricably linked--or so it seemed for more than two centuries. World War II and Pax Americana
In the postwar years matrix reality diverged ever further from actual reality. In the postwar matrix world, imperialism had been abandoned and the world was being "democratized"; in the real world, imperialism had become better organized and more efficient. In the matrix world the US "restored order," or "came to the assistance" of nations which were being "undermined by Soviet influence"; in the real world, the periphery was being systematically suppressed and exploited. In the matrix world, the benefit was going to the periphery in the form of countless aid programs; in the real world, immense wealth was being extracted from the periphery. Growing glitches in the matrix weren't noticed by most people in the West, because the postwar years brought unprecedented levels of Western prosperity and social progress. The rhetoric claimed progress would come to all, and Westerners could see it being realized in their own towns and cities. The West became the collective core of a global empire, and exploitative development led to prosperity for Western populations, while generating immense riches for corporations, banks, and wealthy capital investors. Glitches in the matrix, popular rebellion, and neoliberalism These developments disturbed elite planners. The postwar regime's stability was being challenged from within the core--and the formula of Western prosperity no longer guaranteed public passivity. A report published in 1975, the Report of the Trilateral Task Force on Governability of Democracies,Trilateralism (see access). Wolfe focuses especially on the analysis Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington presented in a section of the report entitled "The Crisis of Democracy." Huntington is an articulate promoter of elite policy shifts, and contributes pivotal articles to publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations's Foreign Affairs
Huntington tells us that democratic societies "cannot work" unless the citizenry is "passive." The "democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess of democracy," which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies. Huntington's notion of "traditional policies" is expressed in a passage from the report: "To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's 'Establishment'."In these few words Huntington spells out the reality that electoral democracy has little to do with how America is run, and summarizes the kind of people who are included within the elite planning community. Who needs conspiracy theories when elite machinations are clearly described in public documents like these? Besides failing to deliver popular passivity, the policy of prosperity for Western populations had another downside, having to do with Japan's economic success. Under the Pax Americana umbrella, Japan had been able to industrialize and become an imperial player--the prohibition on Japanese rearmament had become irrelevant. With Japan's then-lower living standards, Japanese producers could undercut prevailing prices and steal market share from Western producers. Western capital needed to find a way to become more competitive on world markets, and Western prosperity was standing in the way. Elite strategists, as Huntington showed, were fully capable of understanding these considerations, and the requirements of corporate growth created a strong motivation to make the needed adjustments--in both reality and rhetoric. If popular prosperity could be sacrificed, there were many obvious ways Western capital could be made more competitive. Production could be moved overseas to low-wage areas, allowing domestic unemployment to rise. Unions could be attacked and wages forced down, and people could be pushed into temporary and part-time jobs without benefits. Regulations governing corporate behavior could be removed, corporate and capital-gains taxes could be reduced, and the revenue losses could be taken out of public-service budgets. Public infrastructures could be privatized, the services reduced to cut costs, and then they could be milked for easy profits while they deteriorated from neglect. These are the very policies and programs launched during the Reagan-Thatcher years in the US and Britain. They represent a systematic project of increasing corporate growth at the expense of popular prosperity and welfare. Such a real agenda would have been unpopular, and a corresponding matrix reality was fabricated for public consumption. The matrix reality used real terms like "deregulation," "reduced taxes," and "privatization," but around them was woven an economic mythology. The old, failed laissez-faire doctrine of the 1800s was reintroduced with the help of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of economics, and "less government" became the proud "modern" theme in America and Britain. Sensible regulations had restored financial stability after the Great Depression, and had broken up anti-competitive monopolies such as the Rockefeller trust and AT&T. But in the new matrix reality, all regulations were considered bureaucratic interference. Reagan and Thatcher preached the virtues of individualism, and promised to "get government off people's backs." The implication was that everyday individuals were to get more money and freedom, but in reality the primary benefits would go to corporations and wealthy investors. The academic term for laissez-faire economics is "economic liberalism," and hence the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has come to be known as the "neoliberal revolution." It brought a radical change in actual reality by returning to the economic philosophy that led to sweatshops, corruption, and robber-baron monopolies in the nineteenth century. It brought an equally radical change in matrix reality--a complete reversal in the attitude that was projected regarding government. Government policies had always been criticized in the media, but the institution of government had always been respected--reflecting the traditional bond between capitalism and nationalism. With Reagan, we had a sitting president telling us that government itself was a bad thing. Many of us may have agreed with him, but such a sentiment had never before found official favor. Soon, British and American populations were beginning to applaud the destruction of the very democratic institutions that provided their only hope of participation in the political process.
The neoliberal project was economically profitable in the US and Britain, and the public accepted the matrix economic mythology. Meanwhile, the integrated global economy gave rise to a new generation of transnational corporations, and corporate leaders began to realize that corporate growth was not dependent on strong core nation-states. Indeed, Western nations--with their environmental laws, consumer-protection measures, and other forms of regulatory "interference"--were a burden on corporate growth. Having been successfully field tested in the two oldest "democracies," the neoliberal project moved onto the global stage. The Bretton Woods system of fixed rates of currency exchange was weakened, and the international financial system became destabilizing, instead of stabilizing, for national economies. The radical free-trade project was launched, leading eventually to the World Trade Organization. The fission that had begun in 1945 was finally manifesting as an explosive change in the world system. The objective of neoliberal free-trade treaties is to remove all political controls over domestic and international trade and commerce. Corporations have free rein to maximize profits, heedless of environmental consequences and safety risks. Instead of governments regulating corporations, the WTO now sets rules for governments, telling them what kind of beef they must import, whether or not they can ban asbestos, and what additives they must permit in petroleum products. So far, in every case where the WTO has been asked to review a health, safety, or environmental regulation, the regulation has been overturned. Most of the world has been turned into a periphery; the imperial core has been boiled down to the capitalist elite themselves, represented by their bureaucratic, unrepresentative, WTO world government. The burden of accelerated imperialism falls hardest outside the West, where loans are used as a lever by the IMF to compel debtor nations such as Rwanda and South Korea to accept suicidal "reform" packages. In the 1800s, genocide was employed to clear North America and Australia of their native populations, creating room for growth. Today, a similar program of genocide has apparently been unleashed against sub-Saharan Africa. The IMF destroys the economies, the CIA trains militias and stirs up tribal conflicts, and the West sells weapons to all sides. Famine and genocidal civil wars are the predictable and inevitable result. Meanwhile, AIDS runs rampant while the WTO and the US government use trade laws to prevent medicines from reaching the victims. As in the past, Western military force will be required to control the non-Western periphery and make adjustments to local political arrangements when considered necessary by elite planners. The Pentagon continues to provide the primary policing power, with NATO playing an ever-increasing role. Resentment against the West and against neoliberalism is growing in the Third World, and the frequency of military interventions is bound to increase. All of this needs to be made acceptable to Western minds, adding a new dimension to the matrix. In the latest matrix reality, the West is called the "international community," whose goal is to serve "humanitarian" causes. Bill Clinton made it explicit with his "Clinton Doctrine," in which (as quoted in the Washington Post) he solemnly promised, "If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion and it is within our power stop it, we will stop it." This matrix fabrication is very effective indeed; who opposes prevention of genocide? Only outside the matrix does one see that genocide is caused by the West in the first place, that the worst cases of genocide are continuing, that "assistance" usually makes things worse (as in the Balkans), and that Clinton's handy doctrine enables him to intervene when and where he chooses. Since dictators and the stirring of ethnic rivalries are standard tools used in managing the periphery, a US president can always find "innocent civilians" wherever elite plans call for an intervention. In matrix reality, globalization is not a project but rather the inevitable result of beneficial market forces. Genocide in Africa is no fault of the West, but is due to ancient tribal rivalries. Every measure demanded by globalization is referred to as "reform," (the word is never used with irony). "Democracy" and "reform" are frequently used together, always leaving the subtle impression that one has something to do with the other. The illusion is presented that all economic boats are rising, and if yours isn't, it must be your own fault: you aren't "competitive" enough. Economic failures are explained away as "temporary adjustments," or else the victim (as in South Korea or Russia) is blamed for not being sufficiently neoliberal. "Investor confidence" is referred to with the same awe and reverence that earlier societies might have expressed toward the "will of the gods." Western quality of life continues to decline, while the WTO establishes legal precedents ensuring that its authority will not be challenged when its decisions become more draconian. Things will get much worse in the West; this was anticipated in elite circles when the neoliberal project was still on the drawing board, as is illustrated in Samuel Huntington's "The Crisis of Democracy" report discussed earlier.
The postwar years, especially in the United States, were characterized by consensus politics. Most people shared a common understanding of how society worked, and generally approved of how things were going. Prosperity was real and the matrix version of reality was reassuring. Most people believed in it. Those beliefs became a shared consensus, and the government could then carry out its plans as it intended, "responding" to the programmed public will. The "excess democracy" of the 1960s and 1970s attacked this shared consensus from below, and neoliberal planners decided from above that ongoing consensus wasn't worth paying for. They accepted that segments of society would persist in disbelieving various parts of the matrix. Activism and protest were to be expected. New means of social control would be needed to deal with activist movements and with growing discontent, as neoliberalism gradually tightened the economic screws. Such means of control were identified and have since been largely implemented, particularly in the United States. In many ways America sets the pace of globalization; innovations can often be observed there before they occur elsewhere. This is particularly true in the case of social-control techniques. The most obvious means of social control, in a discontented society, is a strong, semi-militarized police force. Most of the periphery has been managed by such means for centuries. This was obvious to elite planners in the West, was adopted as policy, and has now been largely implemented. Urban and suburban ghettos--where the adverse consequences of neoliberalism are currently most concentrated--have literally become occupied territories, where police beatings and unjustified shootings are commonplace. So that the beefed-up police force could maintain control in conditions of mass unrest, elite planners also realized that much of the Bill of Rights would need to be neutralized. (This is not surprising, given that the Bill's authors had just lived through a revolution and were seeking to ensure that future generations would have the means to organize and overthrow any oppressive future government.) The rights-neutralization project has been largely implemented, as exemplified by armed midnight raids, outrageous search-and-seizure practices, overly broad conspiracy laws, wholesale invasion of privacy, massive incarceration, and the rise of prison slave labor (2) . The Rubicon has been crossed--the techniques of oppression long common in the empire's periphery are being imported to the core. In the matrix, the genre of the TV or movie police drama has served to create a reality in which "rights" are a joke, the accused are despicable sociopaths, and no criminal is ever brought to justice until some noble cop or prosecutor bends the rules a bit. Government officials bolster the construct by declaring "wars" on crime and drugs; the noble cops are fighting a war out there in the streets--and you can't win a war without using your enemy's dirty tricks. The CIA plays its role by managing the international drug trade and making sure that ghetto drug dealers are well supplied. In this way, the American public has been led to accept the means of its own suppression. The mechanisms of the police state are in place. They will be used when necessary--as we see in ghettos and skyrocketing prison populations, as we saw on the streets of Seattle and Washington D.C. during recent anti-WTO demonstrations, and as is suggested by executive orders that enable the president to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law whenever he deems it necessary. But raw force is only the last line of defense for the elite regime. Neoliberal planners introduced more subtle defenses into the matrix; looking at these will bring us back to our discussion of the left and right. Divide and rule is one of the oldest means of mass control--standard practice since at least the Roman Empire. This is applied at the level of modern imperialism, where each small nation competes with others for capital investments. Within societies it works this way: If each social group can be convinced that some other group is the source of its discontent, then the population's energy will be spent in inter-group struggles. The regime can sit on the sidelines, intervening covertly to stir things up or to guide them in desired directions. In this way most discontent can be neutralized, and force can be reserved for exceptional cases. In the prosperous postwar years, consensus politics served to manage the population. Under neoliberalism, programmed factionalism has become the front-line defense--the matrix version of divide and rule. The covert guiding of various social movements has proven to be one of the most effective means of programming factions and stirring them against one another. Fundamentalist religious movements have been particularly useful. They have been used not only within the US, but also to maximize divisiveness in the Middle East and for other purposes throughout the empire. The collective energy and dedication of "true believers" makes them a potent political weapon that movement leaders can readily aim where needed. In the US that weapon has been used to promote censorship on the Internet, to attack the women's movement, to support repressive legislation, and generally to bolster the ranks of what is called in the matrix the "right wing." In the matrix, the various factions believe that their competition with each other is the process that determines society's political agenda. Politicians want votes, and hence the biggest and best-organized factions should have the most influence, and their agendas should get the most political attention. In reality there is only one significant political agenda these days: the maximization of capital growth through the dismantling of society, the continuing implementation of neoliberalism, and the management of empire. Clinton's liberal rhetoric and his playing around with health care and gay rights are not the result of liberal pressure. They are rather the means by which Clinton is sold to liberal voters, so that he can proceed with real business: getting NAFTA through Congress, promoting the WTO, giving away the public airwaves, justifying military interventions, and so forth. Issues of genuine importance are never raised in campaign politics--this is a major glitch in the matrix for those who have eyes to see it. Escaping the matrix Seattle represented the tip of an iceberg. A mass movement against globalization and elite rule is ready to ignite, like a brush fire on a dry, scorching day. The establishment has been expecting such a movement and has a variety of defenses at its command, including those used effectively against the movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In order to prevail against what seem like overwhelming odds, the movement must escape entirely from the matrix, and it must bring the rest of society with it. As long as the matrix exists, humanity cannot be free. The whole truth must be faced: Globalization is centralized tyranny; capitalism has outlasted its sell-by date; matrix "democracy" is elite rule; and "market forces" are imperialism. Left and right are enemies only in the matrix. In reality we are all in this together, and each of us has a contribution to make toward a better world. Marx may have failed as a social visionary, but he had capitalism figured out. It is based not on productivity or social benefit, but on the pursuit of capital growth through exploiting everything in its path. The job of elite planners is to create new spaces for capital to grow in. Competitive imperialism provided growth for centuries; collective imperialism was invented when still more growth was needed; and then neoliberalism took over. Like a cancer, capitalism consumes its host and is never satisfied. The capital pool must always grow, more and more, forever--until the host dies or capitalism is replaced. The matrix equates capitalism with free enterprise, and defines centralized-state-planning socialism as the only alternative to capitalism. In reality, capitalism didn't amount to much of a force until the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s-- and we certainly cannot characterize all prior societies as socialist. Free enterprise, private property, commerce, banking, international trade, economic specialization--all of these had existed for millennia before capitalism. Capitalism claims credit for modern prosperity, but credit would be better given to developments in science and technology. Before capitalism, Western nations were generally run by aristocratic classes. The aristocratic attitude toward wealth focused on management and maintenance. With capitalism, the focus is always on growth and development; whatever one has is but the seeds to build a still greater fortune. In fact, there are infinite alternatives to capitalism, and different societies can choose different systems, once they are free to do so. As Morpheus put it: "Outside the matrix everything is possible, and there are no limits." The matrix defines "democracy" as competitive party politics, because that is a game wealthy elites have long since learned to corrupt and manipulate. Even in the days of the Roman Republic the techniques were well understood. Real-world democracy is possible only if the people themselves participate in setting society's direction. An elected official can only truly represent a constituency after that constituency has worked out its positions--from the local to the global--on the issues of the day. For that to happen, the interests of different societal factions must be harmonized through interaction and discussion. Collaboration, not competition, is what leads to effective harmonization. In order for the movement to end elite rule and establish livable societies to succeed, it will need to evolve a democratic process, and to use that process to develop a program of consensus reform that harmonizes the interests of its constituencies. In order to be politically victorious, it will need to reach out to all segments of society and become a majority movement. By such means, the democratic process of the movement can become the democratic process of a newly empowered civil society. There is no adequate theory of democracy at present, although there is much to be learned from history and from theory. The movement will need to develop a democratic process as it goes along, and that objective must be pursued as diligently as victory itself. Otherwise some new tyranny will eventually replace the old. It ain't left or right. It's up and down. Recommended reading (web addresses point to related information) Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization Of Poverty - Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, The Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia, 1997. Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, eds., The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward The Local, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1996. Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion, Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1992. Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, Peter Rosset, World Hunger, Twelve Myths, Grove Press, New York, 1986. Another red pill. Debunks Malthusian thinking, among other things. Here's a sample: "During the past twenty-five years food production has outstripped population growth by 16 Percent. India--which for many of us symbolizes over-population and poverty--is one of the top third-world food exporters. If a mere 5.6 percent of India's food production were re-allocated, hunger would be wiped out in India." Hans-Peter Martin & Harald Schumann, The Global Trap, Globalization & the Assault on Democracy & Prosperity, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1997. William Greider, One World Ready or Not, the Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997. James Goldsmith, The Response, Macmillan, London, 1995. Third World Resurgence, a magazine published monthly by the Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia, http://www.twnside.org.sg. The New Internationalist, a magazine published monthly by New Internationalist Publications, Ltd, Oxford, UK, http://www.newint.org. Holly Sklar ed., Trilateralism - the Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, South End Press, Boston, 1980.
This well-researched anthology explains the role in global planning played by such elite organizations as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergers. Examples from various parts of the world are used to show what kinds of considerations go into the formation of on-the-ground policies. [back to Pax Americana] | [back to Glitches in the Matrix]
Michael Parenti, The Sword and the Dollar, Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1989. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, HarperCollins, New York, 1989. William Blum, Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Common Courage Press, Monroe Maine, 1995. Covert Action Quarterly magazine, published quarterly by Covert Action Publications, Inc., Washington D.C. 1994, http://www.covertaction.org. William Greider, Who Will Tell the People, the Betrayal of American Democracy, Touchstone - Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash Of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon and Schuster, London, 1997. Foreign Affairs, a journal published quarterly by the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.
Footnotes (1) Primarily Western Europe, later joined by the United States. [back to Imperialism and the matrix] (2) See "KGB-ing America." Tony Serra, Whole Earth, Winter, 1998. |
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From : Eric Stewart
Email= ericstewart@imap.cc
Sent : Thursday, December 28, 2006 5:46 AM
To : ericstewart@imap.cc
Subject : End of year report: The State of the World
http://destabilize.blogspot.com/2006/12/end-of-year-report-state-of-world.html
by Richard K. Moore
the midst of a global Great Transformation. By some strange coincidence,
this Great Transformation seems to be synchronized with our calendar --
coinciding more or less with the beginning of a new millennium.
'New Millennium' is not a buzzword that people use yet, but they will
soon. I wonder how far we were into the 1900s before people recognized
that the Twentieth Century was a very special century? World wars,
relativity, air travel, radio & TV, nuclear energy, mass prosperity,
computers -- the pattern of radical invention became clear soon enough,
but when was it first recognized as a 'phenomenon of the century'? By
comparison, those phenomena will seem insignificant compared to those
that will be identified with civilization's Third Millennium.
There are many singular events that can be identified as 'signs of
changing times'. In my own mind, two such events that stand out were the
'98 Seattle protest, and the '01 WTC incident. I pick the Seattle
protest because it symbolizes the growing and deep-seated popular
rejection of the current world order. I pick the WTC incident because it
symbolizes the elite reaction to that rejection. The people said:
"Here's what we think of your old millennium," and the rulers answered:
"Here's what we've got in store for you in the new one." Again
coincidentally, these two events evenly straddle the beginning of the
new millennium, each a year and some months separated from it.
There are of course many dimensions to this Great Transformation. The
events I selected above reflect only one dimension: the relationship
between Western citizens and their governments. I see this as the most
critical dimension however, as that perspective is the one from which we
can identify a path of hope. Only when the people of the West wake up
and make their dreams of democracy real, can the direction of
transformation be shifted toward the salvation of humanity.
In the rest of this report, I will be exploring the state of the world,
and likely near-future scenarios, assuming that Western populations
remain unable to rouse themselves from their current hypnotic trance,
their dream that they are living in reformable democracies, their state
of denial regarding elite rule and elite machinations.
* The Geopolitical Dimension
There are four significant players on the geopolitical scene.
1) The Anglo-American Block: controlled by Anglo-American banking
elites, backed up by the Pentagon, seeking global hegemony, and with EU
elites cooperating -- while at the same time they seek to keep their
options open to the East.
2) The Sino-Russian Block: led by Sino-Russian political elites,
supported by a military strategy based on asymmetry, seeking a
multi-polar world, and in alliance with other SCO members.
3) The Independent Rebels (ie, all those smaller nations that Washington
considers to be 'troublesome to US interests'): with leadership
symbolized by Hugo Chavez, in an alliance-of-convenience with the
Sino-Russian Block, and increasingly showing the courage to defy the
Anglo-American Block and its imperialist system
4) The Global Insurgency: with leadership embodied in Hezbollah and in
the people of Iraq, Mexico, unoccupied Palestine, and other similars.
hegemony, and the Global Insurgency is complicating the problems of
imperial management, the Big Game is between the Big Blocks: the West
vs. the East, Washington & London vs. Moscow & Bejing. All the major
international initiatives of these Big Players amount to jockeying for
position in the face of an inevitable confrontation.
The Anglo-American Block is pursuing three parallel strategies. In the
short term, it focuses on domination of the Middle East, in an effort to
control international petroleum markets and to maintain the dollar as a
reserve currency. In a slightly longer term, it sees two options for
itself: a victorious first strike on the Sino-Russian Block, or -- if a
multi-polar world cannot be avoided -- a retreat into Fortress America.
In pursuit of the former it is rapidly developing a space-based
control-of-theater system, and in pursuit of the latter it is preparing
a neoliberal-based merger of Mexico, the US, and Canada.
Time, meanwhile, is entirely on the side of the Sino-Russian Block. The
longer confrontation can be postponed, the stronger that Block becomes
in relation to its adversary. The ancient Chinese strategic paradigm is
at work here: the wise general wins from position, avoids combat, and
leaves his adversary a way out (acquiescence to multi-polarity). This
Block will not intervene if the US attacks Iran, partly to delay direct
confrontation, and partly because they are willing to write off the
Middle East as 'Anglo-Amercian territory', in return for de facto
recognition of Sino-Russian hegemony in Eurasia. That fits well with
their vision of a multi-polar world.
It is the Anglo-American elites that are under the pressure of time, and
that is why they are so frantically flailing for position wherever they
can, sacrificing their own economies and civil societies, and flagrantly
violating every standard of international law and human decency.
The psychically primitive elites of this Block follow in a direct line
from the Vikings, the Crusaders, and the Conquistadors -- they
understand only conquest and exploitation, and they see compromise as a
fatal weakness. The more evolved chess and Go players of the East see
them as cowboys, and are patiently waiting for them to exhaust their
ammo in peripheral battles.
While the Anglo-American Block is managed so as to enrich an elite
clique, the Sino-Russian Block is managed so as to promote national
interests. While the former is desperately cannibalizing its national
infrastructures, the latter is patiently strengthening theirs. This is
why time is on their side.
From a geopolitical perspective the Great Transformation can have one of
two outcomes: (1) Anglo-American hegemony -- in which case the entire
world will for the first time be controlled by a single elite clique --
or (2) multi-polarity, whereby China will re-emerge as the world's Great
Central Nation, with the five-century tide of Western Expansionism
finally brought to a halt.
* The Economic Dimension
The central economic fact of the Third Millennium is the collision of an
irresistible force with an unmovable object: the paradigm of industrial
development and economic growth cannot be sustained in a finite world.
Economically, this fact exhibits itself as a declining global economy in
real terms, the flight of capital into speculative markets, the
de-industrialization of the entire Western world, and the impending
collapse of the US economy. Environmentally, this fact exhibits itself
as deforestation, loss of topsoils and fisheries, oil depletion, species
extinction, and global warming.
These economic conditions are motivating the Anglo-American grab for
hegemony, and these economic conditions favor the East, with its vast
land mass and its lower level of economic development -- ie, its lower
level of structural economic waste. It will be much easier for Eurasia
(and the third world) to move toward sustainability than it will be for
the West. Again, the national focus of Eurasian elites has more survival
potential than the does the greedy, self-serving focus of Western
elites.
In the West it is the people who are exploring the question of
sustainability, while the elite focus is on increasing the sales of
automobiles, jet travel, and petroleum (despite Gore's hypocritical
campaign posturing). In China, on the other hand, it is the national
leadership which is beginning to understand the need for sustainability,
being the first nation to require photovoltaic cells in some of its new
residential construction.
It is in the economic dimension that the Great Transformation will be
most pronounced. Whether we have a multi-polar or a single-empire world
order will be of interest to political scientists and historians, but
the necessity of sustainability (or die) will effect everyone directly.
* The Political Dimension
The Age of Enlightenment is over. The liberal mythologies that arose as
an apology for capitalism have been abandoned by Western elites. In
Britain and the US, the standard bearers of neoliberalism, the death of
the democratic myth is all too apparent. Europe lags behind, but EU
elites have no vision of an alternative future. Fortunately Europeans
are considerably more politically evolved than Americans or Brits, as
evidenced by the popular rejection of the neoliberal EU Constitution. In
Europe there is hope for popular democratic impact, while in the
heartland of the Anglo-American Block, one sees mostly sheep panicking
for a path away from chaos, or distracting themselves with consumerism
and television fantasies.
In the Sino-Russian Block, there is little political hope. China, the
heart of the Block, is the longest standing centralized society in the
history of the world (5,000 years or so). One might compare this with
Germany, which until 1871 was still divided into autonomous units, or
the USA, which didn't even exist until a century before that. The
Chinese are so conditioned to hierarchy that there is little hope of any
kind of democratic impact.
If there is to be an effective popular response to the current path of
civilization, if humanity is to be saved, the initiative must come from
the West. In the East the psychology of hierarchy is too deeply
ingrained, and the third world cannot control the course of geopolitical
events, regardless of how enlightened its leaders and people become.
It is up to us, over-coddled and over-comfortable Westerners, to begin
the process of turning the Great Transformation into the Great
Enlightenment, rather than the New Dark Ages. This can only happen when
we wake up from our pseudo-Enlightenment trance.
SOURCE: Cyberjournal
http://cyberjournal.org/
--
http://escapingthematrix.org/about_author.html
Escaping the Matrix — How we the people can change the world
by Richard Moore. Published by The Cyberjournal Project, Redwood City, California
home
http://escapingthematrix.org/
About the author
Richard Moore
Wexford, Ireland
Author speaking at launch of his first book, The Zen of Global Transformation, in the Wexford Arts Center, September 2002 (click to enlarge)
Education
Stanford University, 1964, B.S. Mathematics, with distinction.
Publications (samples)
Escaping the Matrix, Whole Earth (#62), September-October, 2000.
History, structure and future developments of WTO, Presentation to the Special NGO Committee on Development, round table on World Trade Organization (WTO) and its effects on economic, social and cultural rights, Geneva, 12 May 1998.
Closing the Information Highway, Toward Freedom, December 1997.
The Life Cycle of Creative Endeavors, Enneagram Monthly, February 1997.
Doublespeak and The New World Order, New Dawn, March-April 1996.
Background
Richard focused on math and computer science at Stanford, and upon graduation jumped whole-heartedly into the emerging Silicon Valley scene doing software R&D. He was privileged to work at many of the leading-edge companies of their day, including Tymshare, Xerox PARC, Apple Computer, and Oracle. His specialty was delving into problems that weren’t well defined, where one needed to invent as one went along, and where the risk-adverse seldom ventured.
After thirty years in the software industry, Richard decided that there had to be more to life than commuting and trading days for dollars. He drew out his savings and moved to Ireland, to find out what his life was really about. This change of scene, at fifty-something, turned out be a liberating experience. He found himself able to do all those things he had been too inhibited to pursue back home, such as joining the light opera, acting in stage plays, and playing music in the pubs. Above all, he discovered that his real passion is for writing.
For Richard, writing is a means of learning, more than a means of conveying what he knows beforehand. As other authors have also reported, he has no idea where a piece will end up when he begins. Writing for him is a way of unlocking his powers of observation and analysis, opening a path of discovery that leads wherever it is meant to lead. He offers his work to the world not with, “Look at what I created,” but rather with, “Look at what I found”
This current book represents the culmination of Richard’s ten-year investigation into some of the most fundamental questions of our day: How does the world really work? What could a better world look like? How can we bring about the necessary transformation? As with his earlier endeavors in the computer industry, this was a quest that was poorly defined, and which required invention along the way. And as with those earlier projects, he found that it became necessary to question many of the assumptions that he, and his fellows, had long been taking for granted.
Current projects
cyberjournal.org
moderating a website and email lists that have been in operation for the past ten years, presenting views and analysis, and providing a forum for dialog among cyberjournal community members
this website
creating a web presence for the book, participating in phone-in radio interviews, and generally promoting the book through online networking
Dialog forum for readers
Achieving real democracy through harmonization
creating blogs, linking them in to existing online communities, and generally seeking to tap the potential of the web to facilitate the emergence of creative and empowering online dialog
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http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/
http://groups.msn.com/HumaneLiberationParty/
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